Lecture One

WHAT is a party? This question would appear to be very
simple. Amongst those present there will be without doubt many
party members, and it is even possible that this question will
seem to them an idle one. But this is not so at all.

When we are dealing with scientific definitions in those fields
where masses of people are involved in a living way  this is
entirely applicable to social organisations  then you will
nearly always see that the representatives of different classes
and world outlooks define differently the essence of this or that
social organisation. Let us take as the nearest example to the
present case, that of the trade union in which millions of people
participate. Everyone knows what such an organisation consists
of. And yet, at the same time, the representatives of different
classes give it different definitions. While Karl Marx used four
words to express the essence of a trade union as a school of
socialism the representatives of the bourgeois world of
science define it quite differently. The Webbs, the well-known
British writers of reformist and Menshevik persuasion, maintain
that a trade union is nothing other than an organisation of mutual
aid and in fact, benevolence. And if in addition you wish to know
how, lets say, some German professor supporting the Catholic
Centre party defines a trade union you will find that in his
opinion it is virtually a religious institution or a charitable
foundation.

And this is understandable, for in questions where the
interests of hundreds of thousands of people are directly involved
you will search in vain for any impartiality in the definition of
the most ordinary things. Therefore our wish to define a party,
from the very beginning, is far from idle.

Marxist and bourgeois definitions of the word party

The word party comes from the Latin pars,
that is, a part. Today we Marxists say that a party is a
part of a particular class. The representatives of the bourgeois
world of course think otherwise. So for example the
distinguished German conservative journalist Stahl who
classified parties by the appearance of their degree of
revolutionary or constitutional basis in relation to the old
regime came to the conclusion that the struggle of parties is
the struggle between the divine and the human order, between the
precepts of divine providence and institutions created as a
result of the transient needs and fancies of man, or to put it
more briefly, between good and evil. And the no less
distinguished Zurich political figure, Rohmer, attempts to place
psychology at the basis of the definition of parties. He says
approximately the following:

Human society is born, develops and
dies. Consequently it can be young or old. In accordance with its
age this or that political outlook holds sway. In mans
childhood the passive forces of the spirit prevail; sensibility
and living fantasy develop during this stage but there is no
creative force or rational criticism. Radicalism above all
corresponds to this state. (Hence radical parties). In youth and
maturity the creative forces of the spirit and healthy criticism
move to the fore, in youth a striving for creativity plays the
major role while in maturity it becomes one to conserve what has
been acquired. Liberalism and conservatism correspond to these
states. (According to this theory the majority of those present in
this hall filled with communists ought to be either liberals or
conservatives.) Finally in old age the passive forces of the
spirit take the upper hand; a fear of everything new and an
addiction to me old; this corresponds to absolutism. Thus in any
society young, mature and senile elements are simultaneously in
existence and we can see corresponding to this coexistence
radical, liberal, conservative and absolutist parties out of which
those which most closely match the temperament and spirit of the
people predominate. The existence of all these parties is
inevitable; political life must proceed through equally active
forces which have developed in society and the wise politician
must even when fighting against them never aim to destroy any one
of them completely because such an aim is unattainable, and to
accomplish it would only drive tho infection inside the
organism. The temperament of a given individual will primarily
determine his adherence to one or another party. Thus Alcibiades
was a boy all his life, Pericles remained a youth until his grave,
Scipio was a man and Augustus was born an old man. And peoples
also are in just the same way distinguished by different
characters: the Germans are conservative by temperament but
liberal by their cast of mind; the Russians are radical but
inclined towards absolutism. (All this was of course written
before 1917).

So you can see that in bourgeois science the definitions of the
concept of party are extremely diverse. And it is a
rare thing when one of its representatives decides to take the
bull by the horns and says straight out that a party is the
militant organisation of this or that class. This simple truth
which is absolutely plain to you and me, bourgeois scientists
will not and cannot admit for the same reason that they avoid
calling parliamentarianism or the church by their proper
names. The bourgeois system is by its very nature compelled to
depict a whole number of institutions designed for the class
oppression of the proletariat as organs of class harmony and
reconciliation; it has to present them to public opinion and
even to itself in just this form and not as organs of class
struggle.

To clarify even more I will give you a definition of the word
party belonging to one of the comparatively
inoffensive Russian journalists, the half-Cadet, half-Narodnik and
fairly talented journalist, Vodovozov. In a particular essay
devoted to the definition of the word party he writes
What is a party? This word refers to more or less sizeable
groups of people having common political ideals

and striving for one and the same political reforms and
organised for the defence of these ideals or for the struggle to
realise them. This definition appears to be innocuous and
close to the truth. But in fact the author consciously and
carefully avoids the words class and class
struggle. In his opinion a party is purely and simply an
organisation of like-minded people sympathising with a specific
ideal. To put it another way the very essence is
tacking from this definition, it lacks flesh and blood, suffers
from anaemia and has no real content.

Milyukovs Definition

Let us take an even more recent example: Milyukovs
definition. You will see that this too is dictated by a
particular class interest. We all know that the Cadet Party
which Milyukov led called itself non-class. We
fought it on this ground and demonstrated that non-class parties
do not exist and that the Cadet Party was a class one
representing a definite class of landowners and the
bourgeoisie. For if today you cast a glance in retrospect, that
is, look back, then you will understand why Milyukov in the
event, emerged simultaneously as a bourgeois scholar and as a
militant politician. For him as a militant politician it was
necessary that the class, landowner character of his party was
not clear to the people: the Cadets could not openly tell the
masses that they were defending the interests of the landowners
and the upper bourgeoisie, that is, of the small propertied
minority of the population. As a militant politician he sensed
and understood that at every mass meeting it was necessary to
keep his party under a veil, to bring it onto the stage as a
beautiful unknown and to conceal its features carefully. And in
this task Milyukov the militant politician was faithfully served
by that pillar of learning, Professor Milyukov, who proved with
the aid of his bourgeois erudition that it is not at all
obligatory for a party to be a class one and that his party was
a group of like-minded people having definite ideals
irrespective of what layer of the population they might be
connected with. This example clearly shows you how easy it is to
throw a bridge across from the academic definition of Vodovozov
to the wholly concrete active bourgeois policy of
Milyukov. Vodovozovs latter formula was very useful as it
could easily shield the Cadet party and thus smuggle in a class
party under a non-party yoke.

The S.R. partys formula

Let us now take some closer neighbours of ours, the
Socialist-Revolutionaries. You know that they did not call their
party non-class but inter-class. This definition flowed from
their programme. And in fact the classic formula of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries stated that they represent m the first
place the proletariat, in the second, the peasantry, and in the
third, the intelligentsia: that is, three major social layers at
one and the same time. For this reason the very first
theoretical battles waged between the Marxists and the S.R.s
revolved around the assertion that inter-class parties do not
exist. Every party is connected with a definite class and must
therefore defend definite interests. We have linked our fate
with the proletariat, we said. This still does not mean that we
will have an inimical relationship with the peasantry,
particularly in this predominantly peasant country. The task of
the proletariat in such a country consists in creating a certain
co-operation and collaboration with a second and numerically
vast class. We have come from the proletariat. We are its
party. While being a party of the proletariat, we will,
however, lead the peasantry in struggle too, for we have many
interests in common.

After the events of the recent years the practice of the
S.R. party has become sufficiently clear and only now is it
transparently clear why they latched on to that definition of the
concept of the party which they gave in the 1900s, for example,
when their party was still only being born. It seemed to many
young comrades at that time that Plekhanov  then the
generally acknowledged leader of our party  paid too much
attention to this controversy; it seemed that he had embarked upon
a struggle without any real point. Many people then supposed that
the polemic between Plekhanov and Chernov was purely academic, and
others reproached them for starting a row over the concept of
party and class instead of waging a joint struggle
against autocracy. But now you can see that this dispute was not
academic but political and highly important.

That is why it is necessary above all to specify what you and I
will understand by the word party and define it
clearly and exactly. We understand by this word a political
organisation forming a part of any class. To put it another way
parties are proletarian and bourgeois. For us, a party is not
simply a group of like-minded people or a collection of people
sharing a common ideology which, irrespective of their connection
with this or that class, they can preach wherever they wish. For
us a party is, I repeat, a part of a particular class, which has
arisen from its depths and has linked its fate with it. And the
circumstance of the class from which a given party arises places
upon it an ineffaceable imprint, determines the whole of its
future life and its role in relation to a given state.

Class and Party

Today we use the words working class and
class which are clear, comprehensible and beyond the
realm of debate for any of us. For you and I the concept of
class has entered our flesh and blood and our
everyday life: we have seen a class acting in two revolutions
and have studied it well; for us it is an elementary basic
concept. But previously it was not so. From my exposition you
will see that the whole struggle between the Marxists and the
Narodniks took shape, at least in its first period, over the
formula of class or simply people as it
was then expressed. There was a time when the entire struggle in
Russian socialism turned around the questions: what is a class
and should the revolutionary have in mind a particular class or
is he obliged to fight for the whole people"?

As you know the theory of the class struggle was discovered by
none other than Marx. This does not mean that he discovered the
class struggle. This struggle is not a theory but a living
fact. But formulating, generalising and providing us with a
conception of the whole history of mankind as a struggle of
different classes was Marxs work. And the whole struggle of
the founders of our Marxist party against the first generation of
revolutionaries, the Narodniks, could essentially be to explaining
the class struggle by the Russian experience and to providing a
conception of what the working class in Russia was. That is why
this simple concept which today forms the property of each one of
us, the concept that our party is a part of the working class, has
been forged over decades of theoretical and practical
struggle. And if we wish to understand the history of our party
then we must before all else be quite clear on this first
point.

In finishing the examination of this question I must say the
following as well. I may be reminded that frequently one class has
several parties. This is of course true. The bourgeoisie as a
whole for example can count several parties: republicans,
democrats, radical-socialists, simple radicals, independent
liberals, conservatives etc. Doesnt this fact
contradict the definition I have given? I will be asked. I
dont think so. It is necessary to bear in mind that
bourgeois parties often in practice form not separate
self-contained parties but merely factions of a single bourgeois
party. These factions fight amongst themselves like game-cocks at
this or that moment (especially when it is a question of
elections) and rattle pasteboard swords at each other
generally. Often it is even advantageous to them to put things
over to the people as if they had serious disagreements. But in
actual fact on the basic questions embracing millions of people
they share a complete unanimity. They quarrel only over secondary
questions while on the fundamental questions over which people
fight on the barricades, plan revolutions and suffer from civil
war and famine on all these questions, and above all on the
question of private property, all bourgeois parties are
unanimous. And in the final count we have every right to say that
in relation to the main questions there exists only one big
bourgeois party, the party of the slave-owners and supporters of
private property.

In history there are plenty of examples of this. At one time in
America the northern and the southern states came to blows over
disagreements on the question of slavery. But this did not prevent
the young bourgeois country which was only then taking shape, from
emerging a short time later before the whole world in the role of
a strong bourgeois state based firmly upon the principle of
private property and in no way denying modern capitalist
slavery. And you can in general point to as many such collisions
between different bourgeois parties as you like but they only
confirm our position that a party forms a part of a definite
class.

Now I shall direct your attention to yet another
circumstance. It should not be thought that every class
immediately puts forward as it were a ready-made party
corresponding to its interests as a whole. It would be a mistake
to think that things are just as simple as follows: class no. 1
with party no. 1; class no. 2 with party no. 2. In social life and
conflict things develop in a much more complex way. Individual
people can make mistakes. It sometimes seems to them that they
belong heart and soul to one class but when put to the test and a
decisive moment arrives it can turn out that in fact they are in
their whole being of another class. Their road follows a zigzag
path. In certain periods of their development they put forward
definite policies. In the course of time and under the influence
of the turmoils of the class struggle and whirlwind of great
events; when hidden layers of the particular class heave up and
sharply pose new questions, deep down inside these people
regroupings, shifts and crystallisations take place. And it is
only a long while afterwards in the critical years that the basic
questions powerfully emerge and divisions are finally created
which really correspond to the given class. That is why if you
approach this question too schematically and too simplistically
you will meet many contradictions in your way. This basic question
of our life has to be approached scientifically as befits Marxists
 that is by rejecting from the outset an excessively
mechanical approach to social phenomena. One has to understand
that a party is not born overnight, that it takes shape over
years, that inside its ranks definite social regroupings occur and
that individual groups and people will sometimes fall accidentally
into this or that party, will then leave it and others will take
their place. And only in the process of struggle when we are
confronted with a more or less completed cycle of developments can
it be said that a particular party fully corresponds to a given
class.

All the above also gives us an answer to the question, what is
the relation between the Communist, Bolshevik Party and the
working class? It can be said: if a party is a part of a class, if
our party is a part of the working class, its representative body,
vanguard and leader then how is it that there are still other
workers parties? How is it that there is the party of the
Mensheviks calling itself a workers party and the party of
the Socialist-Revolutionaries which also declares that it defends
the working class? And speaking on an international scale how is
it that there exist Social-Democracy and the Second International,
both connected with the working class? Doesnt all this
contradict our definition?

This question is not academic either because it brings us right
to the crux of the matter. What I said about bourgeois parties
relates to a considerable degree to workers parties
too. Neither the working class nor a workers party is born
all at once. The working class takes shape gradually over decades:
the rural population overflows into the cities, in part returning
home and in part settling there; it simmers over and over again in
the cauldrons of the industrial cities creating the working class
with its characteristic psychology. In a similar way a party of
the working class also takes shape over years and decades. Certain
groups considered subjectively that they were defending the
workers, as for example the Mensheviks did in the first
revolution. And only gradually when history raises all those
questions which I have attempted to outline to you, those basic
questions which separate people into different sides, make enemies
of friends and place them on opposing sides of the barricades and
produce civil war  only then does stratification,
crystallisation, splitting and re-unification begin and only then
does a definite party finally take shape. And this process which
is closely tied up with peoples lives will terminate in a
complete form only with the era of the complete victory of
socialism, that is when classes and parties disappear. It is not a
chemical process which can be observed through to the end in a
flask. In social phenomena one has to learn how to generalise and
to probe more deeply into events and facts which embrace in their
radius of action millions and tens of millions of people.

At the present moment the Second International still has
considerable links with working class groups while being, as it is
clear to all of us, in essence nothing but a faction of the
bourgeoisie, its left wing. Many honest workers are members of the
Second International. We have several workers parties while
there exists only one working class. At the same time it is
necessary to note that although there are several workers
parties there is only one proletarian party. A party can be a
workers one m its composition and yet not be proletarian in
its orientation, programme and policy. This is clear from the
exam-pies of the capitalist countries of Europe and America where
there are several workers parties but only a single
proletarian one, the Communist Party. There you have not only
Social-Democratic parties but Catholic, i.e. church, trade unions
and all sorts of other unions. All of them are parts of the
working class but in their policies they are merely a faction of
the bourgeoisie.

Anniversary dates

All we have said above is necessary for a conscious attitude
towards the history of our party. Its creation, its
process of formation; or to use philosophical terms,
all its prehistory and its first chapters which occupied many
many years is nothing but a gradual crystallisation of a
workers party in the depths of the working class. And
therefore when we speak of the twenty-fifth anniversary of our
party this must be taken with certain qualifications. You will
see this from a number of examples.

The North Russian Workers League founded with
the assistance of Plekhanov and set up under the leadership of
Khalturin, a joiner and Obnorsky a fitter must be regarded as the
first cell of a workers party. It was born at the end of
1877 (you could even say 1878) in St. Petersburg and was first to
advocate the idea of the political struggle of the working
class. This organisation was of course not yet Marxist. Exactly 45
years have passed since 1878 and it would not of course be
stretching matters too far to count the chronology of our party
from the formation of the North Russian Workers
League.

The Emancipation of Labour Group was founded in
1883. It was formed at a time when a generation of
revolutionaries, headed by Plekhanov and Axelrod, which had
survived the Narodnik affliction, broke from populism and
recognised the necessity of building a party on the basis of the
working class. This group first put forward, in 1885, a draft
programme of the Social. Democratic Party and forming therefore
the first Marxist organisation in the history of our revolutionary
movement has therefore every right to be the chronological point
of departure of our party. In this instance we would say that we
are celebrating its 40th anniversary.

We could consider as a third date our First Party Congress
which was held at Minsk on 14th March 1898 and if we take this as
our starting point then we can celebrate our 25th anniversary. But
it must be noted that this date is accidental. This congress
passed leaving relatively no traces. The organisations formed in
Minsk were broken up almost 24 hours after the congress, its
participants were nearly all arrested while the Central Committee
of our party fell almost wholly into the clutches of the gendarmes
and could not carry out even a hundredth of the partys
programme of work.

Later followed our Second Congress which was held in 1903 and
began in Brussels and ended in London. In essence it was this
congress which was the first and we could say with just as much
right in this case that we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of
our party. Then in 1905 in London the third and genuine congress
of our party was held, a congress of a party of Bolsheviks as
there were no Mensheviks there. (This was at the point of the
split with them). This congress can also be considered as the
first one for it drew up the basis for the tactics of the
Bolsheviks on the eve of the first, 1905, revolution. So, in this
case, we could celebrate the 18th anniversary of our partys
foundation. And finally we could say that we should count the
history of our party from the moment of the complete rupture from
the Mensheviks which occurred in 1912 when we began to resurrect
our party after the lengthy period of the counter-revolution upon
the basis of the upsurge precipitated by the Lena strike and the
events following it.

This was at the AU-Russian conference at Prague where there
were no Mensheviks present either and at which we said: the old
Central Committee no longer exists, we are building the party
afresh. Strictly speaking it was then that the foundations of our
party were laid after the defeat of 1905 and after the phase of
counter-revolution which it had passed through.

Following this road further we could say that a complete break
from the Mensheviks came not in 1912 but in 1917. And this is
correct because after the February revolution and after the
overthrow of Tsarism, in this very hall, an attempt was made to
convene a united congress of social-democracy where everyone was
invited and to which Lenin addressed his celebrated theses which
have entered the history of international socialism, the theses on
Soviet power. Up till that minute everyone thought that after the
fall of Tsarism social-democracy would manage to unite itself, and
that the Bolsheviks would merge with the Mensheviks.

And as a final point it might be said that not until our
Seventh Congress in 1918 after the Brest peace, when we decided to
rename the party the Russian Communist Party, was it finally
formed.

The process of formation of a party

I have deliberately included a whole series of dates as I wish
to show that the formal and secondary question of whether it
should be 20 or 25 years is not important, but rather the fact
that a party takes shape in living reality. This does not at all
occur so that on one fine day, as Vodovozov expressed it, the
supporters of definite ideals get together and say
to each other: Well then, come on, lets form a
party! No, a party is not formed quite so simply! It is a
living organism connected by millions of threads with the class
from which it emerges. A party takes shape over years and even
decades. If you calculate for example from the moment when
Khalturin formed the North Russian Workers
League then the result is 45 years; if you start your
calculation from the moment when our party was called
Communist then you have 5 years; if you count from
the first congress of our party then you have 25 years and
finally if you calculate from the moment of the birth of the
Emancipation of Labour Group then you have 40
years. Hence it is clear that the living dialectical formation
of a party is a very complex, lengthy and difficult process. It
is born amid sharp pangs and it is subject to perpetual
crystallisations, regroupings, splits and trials in the heat of
the struggle before it finally takes shape as a party of the
proletariat, as the party of a given class and then only with
the reservation which I have already made, namely that the
process is still not finally completed since the departure of
some groups and the adherence of others continues for a long
time to follow. All this we can observe in the fate of our party
as well. If you make a close examination of our partys
social composition then you will see that even in its current
shape when it has managed over 45 years to have finally formed
itself there still occur definite shifts and a relentless
renewal of its elements; you will see how after the revolution
the number of peasants in it increased with enormous speed and
how afterwards their specific gravity became less; you will see
how once again the number of the urban proletariat grew and how
the intelligentsia at first entered it in whole groups and then
began to leave in dense crowds. That is why only by pondering
the peculiarities of this movement, only by examining the party
as a dialectical concept, only by juxtaposing it with the living
struggle of the masses which stretches over years and decades,
can you understand the party as you should.

Populism (Narodnikism)

I have already said that the first phase of the history of the
Russian revolutionary movement was occupied by the struggle
between Marxism and populism: a movement which in one of its
wings was undoubtedly revolutionary and which reached its
particular high point in the 1870s.

Populism has inscribed many glorious pages in the history of
our struggle and has provided a number of unforgettable examples
of personal courage. The heroism of individual Narodniks who left
their families, their class and their class privileges and went
off, as was then said to the people, was amazing and
we have an admiration for it. But at the same time populism as a
whole was not a proletarian movement. If it was said at that time:
we must go to the people then this expression was not
used Accidentally. The concept of class did not exist
for the Russia of those days and the revolutionaries of that era
only knew the concept people. All of us of course
stand for the people and it is self-evident that there is nothing
but good in this concept. But if we take a look at it from the
point of view of scientific definitions then we will see that in
those days a confused ides was purposely incorporated in the
word. In those days the people meant in most cases the
peasantry, for the working class as such did not then exist: it
was only being born. By dint of this the Narodnik movement, though
revolutionary, was still petty-bourgeois. From this, however, it
does not follow that we renounce this heritage and reject the
models of heroism and remarkable courage displayed by the
revolutionaries of the Narodnik period.

Attitude of Communists towards the French Revolution

Let us recall how we communists approach, let us say, the great
bourgeois revolutionaries of the French Revolution of 1789, when
the working class also was still only in embryo. We approach
them with the greatest respect and especially those of them who
proved their unusual dedication to their people. We study the
history of the French Revolution and we urge our youth to learn
from the example of the materialists of that time. And as a
matter of fact anyone who is interested in philosophy can learn
far more from any prominent materialist of the era of the
bourgeois revolution than from certain newly-fledged revisionist
Marxists. For this very reason our party regards it
as absolutely necessary to re-issue especially the classics of
materialism as every one of us will extract far more benefit
from them than from the hastily worked out theories
served up to us which, though at times outwardly
well-intentioned, have nothing in common with Marxism. Let me
repeat: we are bringing our youth up in the spirit of the
deepest respect for the outstanding representatives of the
French bourgeois revolution. We understand its class nature. We
know that it sent the monarch to the guillotine but we remember
also that it promulgated a law against workers
associations. And at the same time the pleiad of the great
bourgeois revolutionaries was the strike force of humanity; it
was the first to breach the front of feudalism and thereby to
give a clear passage to the floodwaters of the then swelling
proletarian revolution. This did not stop the epigones of the
French revolutionaries from being despicable, petty little men
and the agents of capital in the fullest sense of the word. And
we know very well the difference between Marat and even
Robespierre and their epigones, the present-day Poincaré,
Briand and Viviani. It is well-known to us that the then
representatives of the bourgeoisie, acting under the conditions
of feudal oppression, drove a breach through feudalism while
todays representatives of the bourgeoisie who, readily
attiring themselves, like Poincaré and his associates, in the
robes of the heirs of the French Revolution form in actual fact
only the contemptible tools of bourgeois reaction. We know the
difference between them. And such is our attitude towards the
Narodniks too.

Attitude of Communists towards Populism

We know the worth of Zhelyabov, Sofia Perovskaya and all those
who, in the days of the Tsarism which hung upon the feet of
Russia like a ball and chain, in the days when an
unprecedentedly barbaric oppression raged through the country,
knew how to level their weapons up against autocracy, how to
lead the first groups of revolutionaries into battle and how to
walk firmly towards the gallows. Granted that this going
out to the people was not a proletarian movement, granted
that this was a revolutionary movement painted only in a misty
socialist hue; granted all this, yet it was a great movement
just as the start of the French Revolution was. These Narodniks
made a breach in the Tsarist wall and in the autocratic
stronghold. They were heroes, they broke from prejudices, they
burst the chains shackling them to the privileged class, they
renounced everything and went into the struggle for political
freedom. While they sometimes embellished their struggle with
socialist phrases without having a definite socialist programme,
they could not have one, as they marched into battle with a
slogan which did not transcend the bounds of bourgeois
democracy. It is not accidental that the executive committee of
Narodnaya Volya, the leading Narodnik organisation,
addressed in its day an open letter to Lincoln.

We are even ready to take our hats off to the Decembrists as
well, that earlier generation of bourgeois revolutionaries which
also entered the struggle against Tsarism. These men who formed,
in the literal sense of the word, the cream of the aristocracy,
nobility and the officer caste, detached themselves from their
class, broke from their families, abandoned their privileges and
joined battle with autocracy. Although they did not have a
socialist programme and although they were only bourgeois
revolutionaries our generation does not renounce this heritage. On
the contrary, we say that this is a glorious past and we bow low
before the first representatives of revolutionary populism, who
knew how to die for the people in the days when the working class
was still only being born, when there was no proletariat and there
could not be a proletarian class party. But at the same time we
know that between Zhelyabov and Perovskaya on the one hand and
Gotz and Chernov on the other, there exists just as great a
difference as between Robespierre and Marat on the one hand and
Poincaré and Briand on the other. Gotz and Chernov said that
they were pursuing the casse of populism. But we said to them:
You are pursuing it in the same way as Briand and
Poincaré are pursuing the cause of Marat and
Robespierre.

Let me repeat, if we are speaking about individual people then
among the Narodniks of the first period who were stars of the
first magnitude, people who will for ever remain for us
ineffaceable examples of self-sacrifice, heroism and enormous
dedication to their people. But if we put this movement under a
magnifying glass and examine it in the proper way we will find
that, while remaining in general a great step forward, it was not
a proletarian movement.

Prehistory of the Russian Proletariat

Our proletariat was born in the course of long decades: one
could even say over the course of a century. In Martovs
book The History of Russian Social-Democracy which
despite its Menshevik standpoint I recommend you to read, you
can find side by side with erroneous Menshevik views many
interesting facts. The Russian working class began to be born in
the eighteenth century. The first large-scale factories and the
first substantial workshops arose in Russia in precisely this
era. At the same time the first bondsmen, semi-bondsmen and
afterwards the so-called free workers separated themselves out
from the class of peasant, handicraft and artisan serfs.

If you take a look at a work such as Tugan-Baranovskys
well-known study, which does not stand up to a Marxist critique
but does provide a multitude of facts, and, if you study Comrade
Lenins book The Development of Capitalism in Russia
and become familiar with Struves works, you will see
that the first workers movements can be attested in the
eighteenth century and the subsequent years.

In 1796 disturbances of factory workers occurred in Kazan, in
Moscow Province in 1797, in Kazan again in 1798 and 1800 and in
Moscow Province and in Yaroslavl in 1806, in Tambov
Province in 1811, in Kaluga Province in 1814, in Yaroslavl in
1815, in St. Petersburg Province in 1816, again in Yaroslavl and
Kazan in 1817, in Yaroslavl in 1818, in Kazan in 1819, in Voronezh
and Kaluga provinces in 1821, in Vladimir and Moscow provinces and
in Yaroslavl in 1823, in Kazan in 1829, in Kazan and Moscow
Province in 1834, in Kazan in 1836, in Tula Province in 1837, in
Moscow Province in 1844 and in Voronezh Province in 1851.

Besides, scholars who have researched into the Decembrist
rising can prove by pointing to authentic documents that, at the
moment of the emergence of the movement of 1825 (a hundred years
ago), standing in the crowds on the Senate Square were
St. Petersburg factory operatives who in small numbers then worked
in St. Petersburg and who openly expressed their sympathy with the
insurgents when the troops turned out against Nikolai I.

In 1845 Nikolais government was compelled to issue the
first law instituting criminal penalties for striking. In 1848 the
storm of the bourgeois revolution rolled across the whole of
Europe. This movement did not directly affect Russia except
inasmuch as the Tsarist government sent feudal forces to quell the
Hungarian revolution; nevertheless it was of course obliquely
reflected in our country too. So a fresh breeze blew through
Russia as well.

Another basic date is 1861, the year of the emancipation of the
serfs  and the incipient movement of the liberal
bourgeoisie. Gradually a fairly considerable working class began
to appear in Russia which acquired the character of a mass
phenomenon as early as the 1870s. Yet despite this the first
circles of revolutionaries which arose after the Decembrists were
not composed of workers.

Chaikovskys Circle

Formed in 1869, Chaikovskys circle can be considered the
first revolutionary group. Perovskaya, Natanson, Volkhovsky,
Shishko, Kropotkin and Kravchinsky became members of it. These
names are in themselves distinguished to the highest
degree. Chaikovsky has lived on until our day although
politically he has been long since dead. He took part in the
bourgeois revolution of 1917, was a member of the first
Executive Committee (of the Congress of Soviets) and then
occupied a place on the extreme right (even further to the right
than the Mensheviks and the S.R.s). During the unprecedented
campaign of slander against Comrade Lenin when the latter was
declared to be a spy, Chaikovsky was half the instigator of that
affair. After this he was appointed governor by the British in
Archangel, kept company with Kolchak and today finds himself in
Paris, tossed into the dustbin of history.

Perovskaya as you know perished in 1881. She took part in
preparing the assassination of Alexander II and entered the
history of the revolutionary movement as one of its most brilliant
names. M. Natanson died very recently as a Left S.R. who came very
close to us, especially after the famous and absurd uprising that
the Left S.R.s mounted against us. He had split away from the
Right S.R.s at the start of the revolution, was together with us
at Zimmerwald and represents to a certain measure a founder of the
Third International. The remaining members of Chaikovskys
organisation have died either physically  or politically,
as they stayed in the S.R. party.

This little circle shows distinctly how populism developed and
how it provided ideologists for various groups. Kropotkin ended up
an anarchist while Natanson was an internationalist and very close
to the communists. Chaikovsky revealed himself to be a definite
representative of the bourgeoisie and nobody will nowadays dispute
the fact that he was merely a bourgeois revolutionary and at that
a mediocre and poor democrat, not being even able to defend
genuine bourgeois democracy; he did not achieve a hundredth part
of what the real bourgeois revolutionaries accomplished when they
made their bourgeois revolution.

The first workers circle was formed approximately in the
middle of the 1870s, in about 1875. Its most notable participants
were Petr Alexeev, the weaver, Malinovsky, Agapov, Alexandrov,
Krylov and Gerasimov. Those are the principal names. Petr
Alexeevs celebrated speech is well-known and also some of
his contemporaries are still alive  if I am not mistaken
we recently met Moiseenko.

The South Russian Workers League

In 1875 Zaslavsky founded the South Russian Workers
League in Odessa. But its programme was not as clear as
the programme of the North Russian Workers
League founded some three years later. Expressed from the
very start in this situation was perhaps that enormous
difference which existed between the north and south and which
you can trace through the subsequent course of the whole of our
revolution as well. Today it cannot be doubted that the north
will enter the history of our revolution as a revolutionary
section of the Russian proletariat, while all of the
counter-revolution was fledged chiefly in the south where it
continually bred and accumulated its forces.

This disparity of social stratification evidently left a
certain imprint on the first workers organisations: the
South Russian and the North Russian. If we compare the programmes
of the former and the latter then we will see that the North
Russian Workers League was without doubt far closer to
us and revolutionary truth, and it will become clear to us that it
was more advanced in its estimation of the importance of political
struggle and its approach to the mass revolutionary workers
movement.

Marxism and Populism

To gain a clearer understanding of the inter-relation between
populism and Marxism it is necessary to bear in mind the canvas
upon which it appeared: in the first place, the absence of a
substantial working class which then consisted of only tiny
streams, whose sources, it is true, rose before the end of the
eighteenth century, but which thereafter lay under the heavy
oppressive weight of autocracy at a time when all cats were
grey, so to speak. The ultimate threads of this canvas consisted
of the journey out to the people  which meant a journey
out to the peasantry with a very confused programme, the courage
of the revolutionaries of that time coupled with a lack of a
proletarian viewpoint, the formation of the first circles made
up of intellectuals, and only in 1875 the appearance of the
first workers circles which were in all their ideology
still closely connected with populism.

I have already spoken about Chaikovsky. This man, as it were,
personifies the finger and thumb of populism. The Chaikovsky of
the end of the 1860s and beginning of the 1870s was the
standard-bearer of the best part of the revolutionary
intelligentsia, a political leader who laid the basis of the
revolutionary movement. But the Chaikovsky of the 1920s represents
quite definitely a tool, and a miserable little one at that, in
the hands of Kolchak and the British bourgeoisie. Thus you can see
in the figure of one man both sides of populism. And in reality
right from its beginning to its end two trends, two currents and
two tendencies clearly revealed themselves in this movement. One
of them brought forward Zhelyabov and Perovskaya and created
heroes: the Sazonovs and the Balmashevs. The second current
especially observable in the 1880s formed the right wing of
populism, i.e. those Narodniks who both in their practical
activity and in their writings were little distinguishable from
the liberals.

The populism of the 1 870s taken as a whole represents a
tendency of bourgeois revolutionaries which had however important
merits. The victorious proletariat will always pay homage to these
revolutionaries. But it will say at the same time:
Dont imitate their weaknesses, dont repeat their
nebulous phrases about the people but speak about a class, go to
the proletariat and know that the industrial proletariat is the
fundamental class which will liberate all humanity. The
Narodniks could not help being weak, unclear and vague for they
lived at a time when the working class was only just being born
and still lay in diapers. From them we must take not the fog which
enshrouded them but what was their strength: be dedicated to
ones people, serve it as selflessly as they did; be
courageous and self-sacrificing; break as they did from class
prejudices and privileges; know how to go against the current at a
difficult moment, as they knew how to. The darker the night the
brighter the stars. The darker the Tsarist night was, the brighter
shone the stars that were Zhelyabov and Perovskaya. And the
Russian working class which has been victorious in struggle and
workers of all the world respect them for this.

Bourgeois and Proletarian Revolutionaries

We know moreover that within populism, which began in the 1870s
and continued into the 1880s, there was a liberal,
functionary-class current which animated a number of literary
tendencies which were close to the ideas of liberalism and which
subsequently drew the S.R. party towards the evolution which we
have observed. Into precisely this framework were born the first
groups of proletarian revolutionaries who laid the foundation of
our party. You must bear in mind and you must clearly remember
that there are both bourgeois revolutionaries and proletarian
ones. Only when we are clear on this fact can we understand the
Ovid-like metamorphosis of the S.R. party. For it was just when
it was a question of a victory over Tsarism and the bourgeois
revolution that these revolutionaries had sweep, energy,
enthusiasm and gusto; they knew what they were fighting for and
what they made sacrifices for and produced great men like
Gershuni. But when the bourgeois revolution had been finished in
the rough, and the job of the proletarian revolution started,
everything which the day before had been their strength became
the next day their weakness. They had become more dangerous to
us than the usual bourgeois counter-revolutionaries because they
immediately turned their energy, dexterity, conspiratorial
talent and their certain rapport with the masses through 90
degrees to oppose the revolutionary class. And here lies the
solution to the whole riddle.

In all the evolution of the S.R.s and in all the metamorphoses
of populism we must distinguish two factors. For a certain period
they were bourgeois revolutionaries. They were a progressive force
and we had to support them and to proceed in a united front
together with them over many years against autocracy. But they
were a progressive force only until the moment that the working
class, having toppled the privileged property-based class, the
class of landowners and bourgeois, reached for power. From this
moment as soon as we passed on to the urgent questions regardless
of the landowners and the bourgeoisie, the S.R.s immediately swung
their whole front against the workers and against the proletarian
revolution.

Struggle between proletarian and bourgeois revolutionaries

All the first phase of the history of our party is nothing
other than at first a semi-conscious and then a fully-conscious
struggle of proletarian revolutionaries against bourgeois
revolutionaries. In so far as it was a case of a struggle
against Tsarism we had, I repeat, a united front. But as soon as
the struggle to win the masses and the soul of the working class
was unleashed, our paths diverged. From this moment the
proletarian revolutionaries grappled with the bourgeois
revolutionaries, and this struggle filled a number of years
which proved to be decisive for the future of Russia.